


(carry these) Heavy Legacies

by yuuki_Illene



Series: Yuu's Tony Stark Bingo 2019 [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ageing, Angst, Coming of Age, Harley is a confused soul, Hurt/Comfort, I have no idea how, OT3s somehow slipped in there, Other, Prepare some tissues, Rhodey is a troll, Romance, its going to rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 21:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17885843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuuki_Illene/pseuds/yuuki_Illene
Summary: Tony knows he's dying -- that's kind of what age does. But the empire needs a ruler.And he has heirs. A family.For Harley Keener, it is a coming of age.2019 Tony Stark Bingo Square K2 - Harley Keener





	(carry these) Heavy Legacies

“When I die, all my shares will go to you.”

Tony suddenly breaks into casual conversation, and Harley almost drops his coffee cup.

“ _What_.” The rim of the mug clatters onto the metal table top, as loud as his surprise.

For his benefit, Tony repeats himself: “When I die, Keenster, I want you to take over Stark Industries.”

It feels like the beginning of the end. Deep inside, Harley _knows_ that it was coming. From the mix of salt and pepper hair, the Stark’s hair was edging on full grey and it has lost some of its volume. Wrinkles peek out from his mouth and eyes and along the hollows of his cheeks. His age stares right back at him — and Harley tries and tries to deny but he can’t when Tony says it so openly.

Slightly betrayed, Harley chokes out, “ _Why_?”

Tony limps over and sits in front of him. “Harl, part of the journey is the end. And me? I’ve lived my life to the fullest, I fought for what I believed and I’ve made a thousand mistakes. All these years have been more than enough for me. It’s time for me to start stepping down.”

It’s selfish, and he’s aware but, “What about _me_? Peter? We still need you, _please_ don’t do this.”

He rolls his eyes. “By the Tesla, I’m not going to roll into my grave just yet. I’ll still be around to haunt you for a bit. I’m just giving you a heads up just in case like _normal_ people do. We don’t need a dramatic unveiling at my will reading and for my assets to become the prize of a reality TV show, okay?”

Harley half-laughs, a relieved sob lodged in his throat. “No giving the media another story on your way out, yeah? Pepper had to deal with one too many stories about you recently and she was mad enough to break out the wine.”

“She’s just jealous I get away with the amount of things that I do,” says Tony, mischief sparkling in his brown eyes still.

His eccentricity never ceased despite his age. From his questionable wardrobes to his large collection of sex tapes — he was never betting with Peter regarding that _ever again_ — and the odd things he executed in his Iron Man suits, becoming old meant living up to all the stereotypes he could.

He drove slowly sometimes to piss the traffic off, he used his walking cane to smack people in the ass with a whistle, he still teased anyone in his vicinity when he could. Once, he had even joked with Peter about wanting grandkids, and his face had taken an interesting shade.

Well, red was the interesting shade until Tony wondered pit loud about radioactive spawns which started to really freak Peter out. To his knowledge, Peter had taken the fertility and DNA test at least three times after that and started to have a vested interest in his sperms. Those days, Harley learned to steer clear of the spider’s lair.

“Sure, that’s what she said, old man,” quips Harley sarcastically.

“You seem to be fine with poking at my age despite thinking I was going to drop dead a minute ago.”

“And you’re not,” Harley states.

“True,” Tony claps his shoulder with a considerable amount of force. _Healthy_. “Anyway, I’m still trying to rope Peter into co-chairing the Stark Industries with you. No sense in making you take it up on your own when Pep and I have been running the conglomerate together for decades.”

Harley narrows his eyes. “If Peter even thinks about rejecting the offer, tell him I know where he lives. And where his girlfriend lives.”

Whistling appreciatively, Tony retorts, “Dirty pool, Keenster.”

“I learnt it from the best, what can I say?”

“Me?”

“No, Rhodey,” Harley deadpans.

His father figure considers that. “Yeah, you got a point,” he concedes. “Oh, speaking of, another thing.” He stretches for an envelope buried metal dust and some tools. From the greying of the parchment, it clearly sat in the lab for a while.

Tony pouts when it gets difficult before he turns to him bats his eyelashes exaggeratedly at Harley. The younger man rolls his eyes at his antics and retrieves it for him.

“Open it,” Tony suggests.

Looking at him suspiciously, he unstrings the thread around the envelope. “Since when did you use paper, old man? I thought it was electronics or nothing?”

“Eh, it was awhile back,” Tony says flippantly, flapping his doubt away. He seemed oddly anxious.

Harley’s brain short circuits when he sees the first line:

PETITION FOR ADULT ADOPTION

His blue eyes snap up from the yellowed pages. “Tony…”

“We’re connected, remember?” He smiles so brightly even as the edges shake. “May as well make it official, right?”

Harley pulls out all the documents to admire them, with a pen conveniently falling out of the envelope. The adoption papers were painstakingly hand-written in Tony’s cursive calligraphy, every line manually filled up. From the reasons, to all the official details, _all of it_. All Harley Keener has to do was sign it.

He doesn’t even hesitate. He places the paper on the table and pens his signature with a flourish.

“Connected, yup,” Harley nods jerkily. “How long have you been waiting to give me these papers?”

Quietly, “The papers have been there since you were eighteen. Those before that were there for four years.”

 _Okay, fuck it_ , Harley thinks as he registers the response, surging from his seat to hug his father. His longer arms wrap around his smaller frame to feel the press of bones, the weight and living warmth of the man he loved.

“All you ever had to was ask.”

_I would have always said yes._

There was doubt in that ever since Tony crash-landed in his life when he was twelve; who understood him without even trying. He hadn’t offered any sympathy for his sob story. He had known what it was like to be a genius, limited by resources and the people around him. He had been there for him unconditionally, whether it was through a call, email or revision of his schematics.

Every memory he has is coloured with memories of _Tony_. The inconspicuous man in a cap and a smirk on his face during his graduations. The smug lecturer who strode into his auditorium, and purposefully called him out because he was that much of an asshole. The holographic face on his screen when he needed someone to be his soundboard. The shoulder he cried on when his mother had been defeated by her illness.

Once, as a bitter twelve-year-old, he had thought his biological father leaving was a curse, a sign that he was unwanted.

But now he saw it as an opportunity for a greater man to step into his life, who gave his time even when he had little for himself, who was not conventional by any means but still everything he needed.

Tony pats his back gently, hiding a huge grin into the fabric of his son’s shirt. “Are you _actually_ crying, Keenster?” He asked gleefully.

“Can you _shut up_ and let the moment be, old man?”

“But I’m allergic to emotions, Harls! It gives me the farts!”

Harley feigns a scowl as he draws back. “You’re terrible. You would think your meds help with your emotional constipation.”

“Eh, report’s not out,” Tony shrugs as he still holds onto one of Harley’s arm. “And Harley?”

“Yes, dad?”

The way his grin stretches even further, so heartfelt and maddeningly _relieved_ , strikes Harley right in his heart.

“Of all the things I’ve done, doing right by you has been one of the best damn decisions I’ve ever made.”

Shoving his hands into pockets, Harley mumbles, “Well, signing the papers were mine so far.”

…

Of all the things that Harley doesn’t think he’ll ever understand — and he gets astrophysics, mind you — is perhaps the relationships that his father was in.

Pepper Potts?

He gets. The couple had always been a constant fixture ever since Tony stepped into his life. Occasionally, when Pepper gets so pissed at him he scampers a few states away to let her cool off. Somewhere in between, Rosehill, Tennessee became his favourite dog house, and Harley is pretty sure that’s not how it works.

You’re not supposed to be _enjoying_ yourself when you did something wrong, but science. He would never give up science time with Tony, and it’s a rule he dutifully abides by even to this day.

Even at sixty-six, the man was still taking him to school.

What he doesn’t quite get is _when_ James Rhodes entered the picture romantically. Or how it became a polygamy.

If Captain America and Bucky Barnes were the signature duo of World War II, Tony and Rhodey belonged to the modern times; the billionaire and colonel, who first started out as roommates in MIT, grew into their positions and had their own share of mutual enemies. Harley had assumed they were strictly best friends, brothers even, but seeing the two men make out on the couch like a pair of teenagers changed that assumption _very quickly._

And the conversation that ensued?

FRIDAY will never let him live it down.

He still blames sleep deprivation and his blood level being too high in his coffee stream.

“Wha— How— When—?” Harley splutters out, wide-eyed.

Rhodey, in all the stoic he could be, stops sucking face with his father figure and looks at him. Harley would like to pretend that the small breathy moan Tony emitted didn’t happen.

“A while,” Rhodey says decisively.

And Harley _swears_ Rhodey had to be as much of a troll as Tony because the next time he catches the compromising positions the Colonel was in with the CEO of Stark Industries was most definitely not a coincidence. No one was _that_ unlucky, and Pepper was a master of discretion. Her public declarations of love are soft kisses on the forehead, her spitfire words in defence of her partners and a small, salacious quirk of her lips.

She’s circumspect where Tony seldom was.

But somehow… they do make it work.

Rhodey still wears the leg braces that Tony had made for him, now more streamlined and the peak of prosthetic technology. Tony goes around with a walking cane fashioned in signature red and gold, arming it with a taser and a flashbang. Pepper offers her arms to the two men in her life, hair and lips flaming red, and they make a sight at every event they deign to attend.

Although Harley would never admit it out loud, moments where he’s curled around the television with three of his pseudo-parents hogging the couch and Peter and MJ next to him, with an assortment of young and old Avengers streaming in and out or joining them in their marathons are moments he treasures the most.

They poke holes in the movies, bicker about their choices and favourites and they are complementary. Sometimes their differences made for exothermic reactions and they have disastrous fights that the entire tower _feels_ because they refuse to give or relent on their rational points. But they seldom let it pit them apart for too long. Naturally, they always fall back together, ill-fitted puzzle pieces reshaped for one another and Harley wouldn’t mind having something like that.

Where love might not necessarily triumph all but is always a conscious choice at every step. To love even when it hurts, to be able put himself aside because some things were not worth losing. He wants to cling onto them tightly like they were his gravity and never let go.

In the warmth of it all, bodies pressed into him all around him and Tony bitching about his leg going numb from his weight, Harley thinks, _this is home._

…

And even if no one wants to _talk_ about it, everyone knows that Tony was living a day at the time.

He’s taken to ageing gracefully. He refuses to dye his hair, insisting to go _au naturelle_ when most of his roots were going to grey. He takes pride in every year that goes by, insisting on a ridiculous number of candles that has him wheezing at the end of the experience. (Fifty-nine was remember with an exorbitant amount of candles that almost melted one ice cream cake, and the table burning.)

But his body hadn’t.

Years of physical service had taken a toll on him. There are days where he has to drag himself out of bed due to his aching bones and phantom pains. His attention span and binges have faded to non-existence as the years passed, both at his mind and his partners’ insistence. Even as he turns a walking cane into a fashion statement like they’re back in eighteenth century England, it doesn’t negate the fact that he needs it for support.

The only time Harley has ever seen Tony raged was when his hands shook. Mechanic at heart, inventor to his soul; unsteady hands would have been a death sentence to his creativity and lifestyle.

And there is one thing Tony will never give to age, not without a fight, was his ability to think and create.

“When all else fails, sometimes that’s all you have,” Tony tells him quietly.

But Keener also knows the look of frustration when his father realises he’s slowing. He sees the building rage lining the whites of his knuckles and the bitten remarks edging on snarls.

(He’s dying.)

He redirects the emotions into more constructive places, more discussion than creation because his wealth of experience still offers unique perspectives that Harley scarcely finds in academic papers.

However, he wonders if he’s doing enough.

Peter clearly felt the same since his high-altitude eating habits were becoming increasingly high.

As he shoves donuts into his mouth, Peter mumbles, “You know bout Extremis, right?”

“Well, duh,” Harley snorts as he plucks a chocolate donut from the box to munch on it. “That’s kind of how I _met_ Tony? He came to my small town to investigate cases of human implosion, charged his Iron Man suit in my garage and asked me for a sandwich.”

Laughing, Peter shakes his head. The scenario was still hilarious no matter how many times he hears it. However, his mood quickly turns sombre again.

“Don’t you ever wish he’d be a little selfish? That he’d use it?” Peter whispers.

They both know what sits in the vault. The orange injection shines like hope.

Quietly, Harley replies. “All the damn time.”

…

But when he sees Pepper, he thinks, _Maybe not._

Pepper Potts tries to preserve the strands of white in her like its a treasure, letting it frame her face behind a curtain of red. She tries to scream her age. Wrinkles are barely there on her smooth complexion. She brings her heel down by an inch, but the force of her strut doesn’t diminish. She still is beauty and grace; an hourglass which ticks down slowly as something foreign clogs the gap.

She hangs on her zenith, all fierce and sharp, while her lovers have started making their descent.

And he realises that whenever she takes them into her arms, there’s a certain fragility.

When she kisses them, she savours them slowly, trying to remember every chapped fissure of their lips. Her hands glide across spots of melanin and traverses the craters of looser skin. She hold them tightly, she tries to pull them up and back but there is no permanent solution to age. She feels the clock ticking in her arms and she’s trying to make every moment (their) last.

As if she senses his conflict, she looks back at him, sea blue eyes shining with untold stories of love and pain and triumph — everything that makes what she has worth keeping — hidden in its depths. She carries a single conviction she knows deep in her bones:

She will outlive Tony Stark.

(The Extremis had insured it even when she hadn’t asked for it.)

It’ll break her when her moon shatters, the seas will rage with a thousand waves, screaming her heartache.

But she’s known for a long time.

She has lived in the throes of such reality when she thought she had lost him for three months, when she watched the palladium creep from the centre of his chest and up to his neck. She remembers this reality every time he puts the suit on, and maybe, just maybe, the reason why she doesn’t pick up the phone after every instance is because she fears it won’t be him. In silence, in ignorance, there is hope that Tony was still alive.

Age might not eat Pepper away, but time will.

So when he reaches the penthouse living room and sees Tony nodding off to the end credits of _Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back_ , he slides across the marble floor to the rhythm of his deep breaths.

Harley settles himself in the arm chair and curls into the chair. And as if Tony’s inhales and exhales are the twinkling starlight cutting through atmosphere, he prays as he would to a wishing star that days where his father was alive could drag out.

…

Another year passes.

Summer turns to winter to spring and back again.

Cyclical the way mortality never was.

The end comes.

Fittingly enough, Tony Stark passes away near midnight in his workshop, surrounded by his first children.

The Tower blares red as FRIDAY cries out the news, repeating the death of her creator without reason, her coding unable to compute the grief. The high-pitched buzz makes him think she’s wailing, and it’s a constant reminder of what has come to be.

Harley’s as numb as the other occupants in the lift. Someone’s already crying.

When they burst into the workshop, door already swung wide, they find Tony Stark like this:

His head leaning against the back of the couch with a smile on his face but his chest too still, a tablet hanging at the edge of his fingers, flashing a slideshow of people and his creations.

 _DUM-E— DUM-E_ , tears well in Harley’s eyes, desperately taps his father’s chest with a dimly glowing arc reactor taken from a half-made suit, somehow hoping it could revive him. U stands between his two robotic siblings, frozen in his spot. Butterfingers, the only ambidextrous bot claws at the displayed Iron Man suits in hopes he could take the arc reactors, thinking it was device, the hardware that was wrong—

And Harley stumbles and grips onto the nearby table. But they’re right.

Age deteriorates the hardware and systems. No matter how competent or vigilante someone’s software is, it cannot function well without a hardware. _Dad is dead._

Sobs come bursting out from his throat. They won’t stop, it pours, it feels like someone has wrenched out his heart and hadn’t given him back another one.

He knew it was coming. Statistics and medical charts had told him what was left. A non-cumulative equation that only keeps subtracting, an algorithm that has reached its end repeat sequence.

But no one talks about the anguish. They don’t tell him how much it _hurts_ when someone leaves, and when shaking and pleading would no longer make them _wake_. Where old scares go unheard. Calls, unanswered.

The warmth of others wrapping around him doesn’t change the coldness of one.

…

The funeral is a large affair for a man as great as Tony Stark.

Presidents from hundreds of countries give their condolences through their preferred mediums, some face-to-face. It makes security a huge pain. Millions from other countries flock to give Iron Man their respects. They give him more titles.

Once Merchant of Death. Futurist. Iron Man. Father of Accords. Thanos’ Slayer. Father of the Technological Age.

They sing their praises and a small, younger part of Harley wants to rage because if his father’s reach and influence is as great as this, where were they when he needed it? They were so eager to tear him apart for his mistakes and yet willingly to bask in his successes.

He’s a ball of rage and grief and _he can’t_.

Harley clenches tight on MJ’s and Peter’s hands and asks for strength.

…

When the lawyer comes in, grim-faced and a suitcase in his hand, Harley slumps.

—But then, instead of extracting papers to read out, he pops in a thumb drive into the side of the huge screen, and a cheery and younger Tony Stark appears.

“You didn’t think I would have a _paper will_ , did you?” He still mocks, and everyone in the room, people who meant something to him, breaks into half-hearted laughter.

“Asshole,” Rhodey mutters.

Tony leans back into his office chair — _office chair?_ — Harley squints, before he starts again.

“If you’re watching this, it probably means I’m dead. That’s kind of how wills work, right? Except that one time in 08’. That was less of a joy ride and more of a glimpse into Hell.” Tony grimaces. “Honestly, I don’t get the point of having to make a will when I’ve left an abundance of instructions to those involved.”

Pepper’s fingers curl around Rhodey’s.

“Rhodey, Pep, you’re getting a quarter of my financial assets, Avengers’ Initiative will get an eighth of it to place into emergency funds, and the rest of my adopted or still-adopted children will get a percentage of I-frankly-don’t-remember, my lawyer did the separation. To the loves of my lives, have a good retirement. To my children, well, your life, your business, make your own damn money. The rest will be distributed into the Maria Stark Foundation, where donations will continue for next two decades.”

“My partners will gain ownership of any and all private properties I’ve acquired over the years, scientific ones go mainly to Peter and Harley, as do my shares to SI. Kamala will take helm of the Iron Man and Iron Legion projects, with the support of the aforementioned two. With my passing, our resident Keenster and spiderling will be taking up the mantle of CTO — Peter, no taking back your words, I’m watching you from Hell and I will haunt you — with one of them hopefully taking over for Pep.” He pauses, humming. “Maybe MJ? That’ll be a fun tripartite.”

Stark cards his fingers through his hair. He gazes intensely into the camera as if he’s staring into their souls. “And for what’s it’s worth… I’m sorry for dying. So… live well and live long for me, will you? I love all of you, always.

“When I go, I’ll dream of all of you. Always. Tony Stark, signing out.”

…

Harley wants to say it gets easier to cope.

But that’s a big fat lie.

He knows no one has entered Tony’s section of the lab, wanting to preserve the man’s personality, so afraid of destroying his organised chaos. He knows the bots have been standing at the door, still hoping that their creator will return.

Rhodey and Pepper sleep in different rooms sometimes. Peter spends most his night roaming the streets, and MJ in her apartment rather than the studio Tony gave her. Kamala can’t bear to look at the Iron Man suits without breaking down.

They’re trying to function but their major cog is _gone_ , and the topic feels unbreachable. Funerals… have always been for the living. They mourn and weep, they fall back into habits which makes everything harder.

The extra cup of coffee. The subconscious need to plate food for someone else. The name that gets cut off mid-syllable because they realise they were no longer there.

But Harley learns it must go on. Time flows and marches, and it will leave him in the dust.

Eventually, maybe like seasons, the winter will stop biting as hard.

Finally, he’ll start looking forward to Spring.

…

“I don’t know why I have to do this, _Mooooom_.” Harley whines as he adjusts his tie in the mirror.

Pepper rolls her eyes as she helps Peter with his tie from the other end of the room. “It’s only your first press conference of many and you’re already complaining. Are you sure you’re not related to him again?”

“Like you wouldn’t know,” Harley shoots back.

“She did the paternity test thrice,” supplies Rhodey with a smirk as he styles Harley’s hair.

“Quite the definition of insanity.”

MJ hums from her armchair. “Nature and nurture. Nurture won out in your case, Keener.”

“Why do we have to do this?” Peter shakes, jerking his head back and forth from his pseudo-family to the door where he could hear the chatter of the reporters.

Years as an undercover vigilante has made him stay away from the press. But now, being the second successor to the tech conglomerate required him to be in the limelight.

“The media loves a good show, a convenient scapegoat and an impending dumpster fire.” MJ drones, propping her tablet on her knee to show a hellscape of screaming and burning victims.

“Can you not predicting our doom before we even start,” Peter complains to his girlfriend.

Said girlfriend blinks with faux-innocence. “Oh, the victims are the reporters.”

“Right.”

“Get out there, both of you,” Pepper rolls her eyes delicately at their antics.

“Yes ma’am,” the newly minted CTOs salute before they walked out of the door.

…

The expected question surfaces:

“Who are you compared to Tony Stark?” One reporter asks.

So many answers flash past his mind.

But only one ever sticks.

The genuine smile which sings faith; the voice that tells him to be better.

_Knock the world off their feet, Keenster. I know you will._

The heir tilts his head upwards, grin bright with satire.

“Me? Call me Harley, the Keener Stark.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> **Beta'd by the wonderful ShinpeiHolic**
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> this is my first marvel fic so please be kind...?  
> the fic ran away from me in terms of ships and plot in the four hours I was typing it
> 
> but I hope you enjoyed it :D


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